Month: January 2008

When I come back home from work, I usually head straight to my bedroom and sleep (my sleep cycle has gone off the charts recently, I’ve been clocking 15 hours a day of late). Or bug my mom for coffee. Or sit in front of the computer to check my inbox (for imaginary new email). But today, instead of doing all those proper, normal things,I decided that I would read today’s ET and ‘improve my financial knowledge’. I plopped in the living room sofa next to Paati (Grandma – who was watching some mega-serial on Sun tv) and picked up the pink newspaper. It was blaring about the great crash in the SENSEX the previous day. That was when Paati just HAD to turn up the volume. I put the paper down and was about to tell her to lower the volume when I actually started watching that stuff. Honestly, it was way more interesting than the FM’s comments on the robustness of the Indian Economy.

Scene 1:Two school girls are coming back from school. Both of them have unnatural smiles plastered on their faces. They are received by a middle aged man, who is waving in such an enthusiastic way that his arm might fall off anytime.

Girl 1 (with creepy smile) : Haaai daddee!

Daddee: Ennada chellam, school mudinjirtha?[Oh darling, is school over?]

(And to think his eight year old daughter could have dug her way out of the school toilet using the spoon packed with her lunch. Einstein ka baap, this one.)

Everyone goes Ha.Ha.Ha in an acutely constipated manner to celebrate the happy father daughter moment. The Ungil Daddee pays the ice-cream kaaran. Suddenly the atrociously happy pingpong music which was playing in the background changes into a bad BSB(!) style bass guitar rip.

We are dignified people, we shall take victories and losses in equal grace but call me a monkey and give me dreadlocks it sure feels good to go IN YOUR FACE, SUCKERS!. Amen.

I pity Harbhajan Singh, the poor guy is facing so much flak because he said ‘monkey’. Mind, if saying ‘monkey’ were a crime, my parents would have been jailed for multiple offenses a very long time back.[Especially my dad. He has really creative ways of saying it, i.e ‘joker monkey’, ‘monkey brain’, ‘mad monkey’ and sometimes even combinations – ‘mad joker monkey’ etc. My mother prefers ‘koranngu’].The point being, ol’ bhajji could have said a million other things but he went for monkey. I believe, strongly that monkey is not a racist term in any aspect. More so because –1.Monkeys do not refer to colour/race in any way.2.Hell, we were all monkeys once.3.It could have been a compliment, monkeys are revered in India.

What the Indian team really needs is a sledging ‘Mental Disintegration’ coach (I do believe Australia is in possession of one). Someone experienced, someone who can swear in multiple languages and someone who can throw words without being even mildly apologetic about it. Someone like my mom when she’s driving in T.Nagar.

Like the few other million people in this world, I too, watched F.R.I.E.N.D.S. And continue to watch reruns whenever I can. The time I used to see the show, Amma would brush it off as ‘just another TV show’ and never really bothered.

Couple of days back, when I was watching a re-run, I didn’t really expect a change.Big Mistake.

And it didn’t stop. She just went on. And on. And on. I do believe that it was the longest half hour of my life. And I ran out of saliva to swallow as well.When the credits came on (finally), she left the living room saying something about how “Pasanga indha maari programme paathu kettu kuttichavura pora”.

I made a mental note that day to watch the show on the computer from now.

Kerala was good, pretty as a postcard. We were very well taken care of.

Something that was particularly interesting about this trip was the fact that all the managers thought I was some kind of ‘homely girl’. Let me elaborate.Lunch. We eat with the managers.It had been a particularly long day and I plopped onto my seat, very tired. When I’m very tired, I tend to swear. When I was 7 or 8, I used to say ‘aiyo amma’, I remember my thatha telling me, ‘don’t say aiyo, its bad, in fact whenever you’re feeling bad, say Narayana instead, umaachi will come and help you.’ So my habit started then, whenever I’m in a mood to swear and there are people in-front-of-whom-you-really-don’t-want-to-be-caught-swearing I usually say “Narayana”. That day, my back was kinda hurting, so when I sat down, it became acute for a moment. I couldn’t go ‘fuck’. Instead I said ‘Narayana’. The Zonal Manager decided to get all witty on me and went “oh, you are saying Narayana at this age itself, like a Paatima” (Granny).I got mildly pissed. I asked him, “Yen sir, perumal paer sonna enna thappu? punyam kadaikkum” (what’s wrong in saying Narayana? You can collect good karma this way).So he goes “Yes ma, but now is the age to do all the wrong things, you can collect punya later.”Amusement.I bend down and peer into my plate to prevent anyone from seeing me guffaw. Poor chap didn’t know that I needed all the punya I could possibly get. We eat. Midway, the ZM passes the beans to me. Zonal Manager: “Indha ma, beans saapdu”(here, have some beans”)Me (in a meek voice): Illa sir, thanks, enakku beans pudikaadhu.(No sir, thanks, but I really dont like beans)ZM:Apo enna saapduva? Pavakka? Podlanga? Avarakka? Vendakka?(Then what do you have? Bittergourd? snake gourd? some-weird gourd? Okra?)I shake my head vigourously to show my intense dislike for the gourd family.ZM: Apo pizza? burger? chinese?

I think. Frankly, I have had enough of pizza, I can’t really stand that stuff anymore. Burgers are a bore and my liking for Chinese food starts and ends with Topramen smoodles. I’m a Pasta-Mexican-Sub-sandwich-Frankie person.I wonder if I should mention the pasta bit but I shake my head anyway.

ZM:Oh my! You really don’t know how to enjoy life!Another Manager: Sir, these people are homely girls, confined to their homes. Konjam conservative.

Oh yes, me, temple-going, south-indian-meals-only-eating, filter-coffee-making, ACHUCHO-saying,very conservative Chutney girl. I found it so incredibly funny that I couldn’t even laugh. I just continued to look into my plate. And they continued to think that they were right.

I will be leaving to the airport in another 45 minutes, going to Calicut on a Bank Audit (PNB) for god knows how long, but hopefully not more than a week.I will be good there.Promise.

I have been to Calicut before, it was my first road trip, I went when I was 6 I reckon, Amma was pregnant with Varsha and I went with my dad. I was a good child then, all I did was pose cutely for the cameras in all those back-watery places. But I don’t remember that place.I really don’t remember too much of Calicut except for the banana chips that I had there every single day.Those chips are legendary.

Will be back in a week (hopefully, hopefully) . Don’t miss me too much. 😉

Another year whizzes by. 2007 was a year to remember, a year that has left me wiser in more ways than one. 2007 was my year, a year that will leave a very deep impact for more reasons than one. A year that I will love, a year that I will remember and a year that will make me go “what were you thinking?!”. But what I’ll miss most about 2007 was school.

The beginning of an end. School. 15 years of memories came to an end this 2007. From the hazy memories of preschool (Where I would watch other kids cry for their mommies with an expression of great amusement) to elementary school, where we would fight tooth and nail to be ‘class leader’, and the chosen ones would even ‘mind the class’ during lunch break (we later came to know that this way, they wouldn’t have to eat the thayir saadham that their mummies had packed for them as they were in pursuit of discipline. And their mummies would look at them as though they had just led the Indian Army into battle or something.) Elementary school was also when we all got nicknames. Be it ‘bad boy Vinod’ or ‘kutti krithikka’ or ‘cartoon shilpa’. The heights of wit, yeah? Our greatest obstacle in life was mathematics. Especially that 2 digit multiplication. I vividly remember my 2nd standard class teacher (useless as she was) suddenly giving us a ‘multiplication test’. The question I got was ’88 x 8′ and frankly I was stumped. They were very big numbers to the average 7 year old. And I blinked a lot ( I didn’t think much of multiplication then, so I had never practised my times tables) and she called me a “maramanndai” (wooden head person, which basically implied that I was a dunce) in front of everyone. I may have not known the tables but I did know what public humiliation was. And hell, I was GIRL! No one calls girls names! That day I vowed to learn tables in and out. Although, come to think of it, that day I had ice-cream (the coolest ice cream then too, chocobar) and called my teacher the unthinkable (at that time), namely ‘loosu’. But then again, the lesson I learned was not ‘learn tables in order to prevent humiliation’ but ‘if your teacher screams at you, have ice cream and call her a couple of names, you’ll feel much better’. I know, I’m most wisdomous. I see her sometimes, whenever I go to the primary block and every time I do, my head automatically calculates 88 x 8 = 704. I smile whenever I think of that and she thinks I’m smiling at her and smiles back. Oh well.

Middle school was no better – we thought ourselves to be the heights of cool – playing truth or dare, ‘teasing’ and that absurd 10 names game. Bottomline was that we were far away from cool, waaay far. My favourite memory of middle school is my maths centum in the 8th standard final exam. I got a 68 in english and 100 in math (my marks are usually the other way round). I remember my class teacher telling me that she checked the papers around 3 times to make sure she didn’t switch grades or something. I don’t mind that English mark. I can score anytime, but that centum gave me such a high. I had achieved perfection,and even my maths teacher was appalled. “You got centum? you?!”. Yes I did, and there is nothing you can do about it. (I was not a favourite, I used to sleep in class and submit incomplete work. But I studied for my final.)

High school, wow, High school. This is was character building stuff. The journey to maturity was not short, we passed through so many things, from ‘pen games’ to ‘boy-girl games’ to ‘derrty jokes’. Junior College gave way to class politics and pointless power games and dating (which I can strongly say I never tried in school. Never).Main School gave me a chance to start over again, and chances like those are rare. I was quite a favourite among the teachers (Yes, I know, I’m nauseating.). But my favourite was Mrs.SS, my math teacher in the 12th. She was brilliant, she’s the reason I still have my 12th standard maths textbook. She demystified calculus for me, from scratch. 3 weeks before the boards. I had missed all my calculus classes thanks to the cultural hopping and would blink in her classes. Trignometric substitution and definite integrals drove me nuts. And that dreaded ‘miscellaneous exercise’ gave me nightmares. The sum I hated most was ∫tanx^4dx. Ugh, I still remember getting that ‘kozhi muttai’ (ZERO) in that sum in my half yearlies. But I know that sum now, I think.

School was something special to me, it made me believe that the world was a comfy place where everyone would be friendly. So much for that. The real world, well, sucks ya.

Greatest Hits

1. The Chetan Bhagat Plot Generator - Why buy another CB novel when you can make your own? Give the Chetan Bhagat Plot Generator a whirl, today!
2. Angst - If you want to write means, write Sriramajayam 108 times. At least some punyam will come for you.
3. Deviance - The Seshadhris are overjoyed that their son wants to get married, at least until they find out that he wants to get married to another man {Short Story}
4. The Boredom of Ravana - Ravana decides that he must do something about all the free time he has, and pays a visit to Kishkinta {Short Story}
5. Leadership, and Such - A (mostly) honest account of my nemesis from school, Powder Subramani.